Glass and Ice
by miettelaenvie
Summary: An every day argument at 221b Baker Street.


It had started as some mundane argument, John going on about finding fingers in the sink, and Sherlock had caught him checking Sherlock's hand to make sure he had all of his digits before collapsing into his chair. "Honestly John, there are clearly ten fingers in that bag. What would I have cut my fingers off with, my feet?" John's head was in his hands and he was rubbing his temples. "That's not the point, Sherlock."

Sherlock scowled, his lip almost twitching into a snarl. He was already having an off day, something pushing at the back of his mind, and he was half distracted with trying to figure out what it was exactly. "You don't like the experiments. I know this, you keep repeating it."

John sighed and looked at him. "And yet there are still body parts in the kitchen."

The detective turned to the window. "Of course. Where else would I store them?" This elicited another sigh from John and Sherlock smiled briefly, enjoying this reprieve from his internal search.

"How about you don't store them here at all?"

"You know it's only temporary."

"Sherlock-" John stopped, and Sherlock could hear him get out of his seat. He turned, watching through narrowed eyes as the doctor retrieved his coat and put it on.

"Where are you going?"

"I just want a cup of tea. That's all I wanted, and I can't get that here."

Sherlock made a face and John shook his head at it. "Sherlock, don't start-" But the detective was already crossing the flat. "Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not!" John yelled, and closed his mouth at Sherlock's raised eyebrow, ignoring Sherlock's hands balling into fists at his side. "I'm not," he repeated, more calmly. "Right. I'm not having this argument with you." He turned and headed down the stairs, and Sherlock watched from the doorway.

"John," he called.

"Goodbye, Sherlock." Came the reply, too loud.

Sherlock crossed the flat to the window, pushing the curtains aside and watching the doctor walk angrily down the street. Despite his clenched fists and tense shoulders, his anger was fading quickly, slipping away like losing grip on a safety blanket.

_Safety blankets are as idiotic as shock blankets. Don't delete that yet._

That thing in the back of his mind, that thing that had been bothering him was stirring, the shake of a rattlesnake about to strike. And there it was, a cold fear flooding him like mercury from a broken thermometer. His temperature was rising but he felt cold to the bone, frozen, shivering. It was pushing at the edges of his vision, the white that brought the violent loss of control, the blinding that intensified emotions he usually never had to bother with. Fear was something he always cancelled out with logical thinking, equations that had solutions and facts and measurements and concrete things he could grip onto mentally. But he was losing the ability to think clearly and he felt fear settle in, slinking down his spine like a trail of liquid nitrogen, freezing him from the inside out, putting his humanity on ice.

The white edges always brought out the worst in him.

He loosened his fists, ignoring the half-moon marks filling with blood, and closed his eyes. _People leave all the time. They come back. He'll come back. He has to. His belongings are here. He'll need them before long, in a few days at most._

The white pushed at the back of his eyelids and he felt himself grimace._He has his wallet. He can buy new things._

Sherlock placed his fingers against his eyes._ But there are things of sentiment here. He wouldn't give those up so easily._

**He would if it meant never seeing you again**_._

_He's out to the pub, he usually goes there when he's mad. _**Too late, the pubs are closed.**_ He's gone to a friend's to stay the night, he has friends that live around here. _**It's two in the morning, he isn't going to bother anyone with waking.**_ He went to visit Harry, he hasn't seen her in a long while. _**You're getting desperate.**_ He's catching a taxi to some body of water to stare meaninglessly at it. _**And then jump into it.**_ No. He's walking to the shop down the street. _**Is he?**_ It all ends, there are definite endings. He comes back. I know it._

**You don't know anything.**

* * *

><p>John came home a few hours later, stepping cautiously into the living room. He was a smart man, there was no doubt he was aware that something had happened while he was away, but Sherlock also could tell that he wasn't sure what exactly it was. Sherlock stayed at the window, staring out, listening to everything, making no sign to show that he had noticed John's arrival.<p>

"Sherlock?" John asked. Sherlock could hear the caution in his voice, hear the eggshells that the doctor was trying to step around. The detective tilted his head, sparing a glance over his shoulder, eyes the color of ice cutting through the flat.

_This isn't good. How long has it been? Hours. Hand, blood, glass. Not good. _

"John." He said, the word coming out with a cold finality that he hadn't intended.

_Regain control. Reconstruct your speech patterns._

John gave a nervous laugh, and Sherlock barely stopped himself from wincing. Uncertainty can lead to fear quickly, too quickly, and for John to be afraid of him? That would be something new. Not something he needed, exactly, but something new. He closed his eyes and placed his forehead against the window, the coldness seeping through the glass rivaling the temperature of his skin.

"Sherlock," John said again, more insistent, and Sherlock braced himself, feeling his shoulder blades try to lodge themselves somewhere beside his ears. He drew away from the window, turning around to face the doctor, brushing his left hand against the table and wincing as the edge struck newly broken skin. John's eyes narrowed, having caught this, and Sherlock slid the wounded hand behind his back, leaning his hip against the table.

"What's wrong with your hand?"

_Not good, not good. This is all not good. Is it possible to delete an entire event? Try on this memory later._

"How was your walk?" he countered feebly. There was a moment of silence where Sherlock could see the clockwork in John's head turning, wondering if he wanted to continue down this line of questioning, what it would entail. Sherlock also saw his brow furrow when he decided to anyways.

"Sherlock, show me your hand."

The detective flashed the pale skin of his right hand, flipping it back and forth repeatedly. John sighed, motioning to the hand behind his back. "The other hand."

Sherlock refused for a moment on pure principle, then seeing John's face, slowly pulled it away from the back of his leg where he had pinned it, displaying to John, something inside his stomach fluttering when the doctor sighed, something like a mix of exasperation and relief wrapped in the breath exhaled.

_Please don't be mad at me._

His knuckles were bloodied, small cuts here and there over his fingers, not to mention the marks on his palm where his fingernails had carved half-circle hollows. John reached out and gingerly examined it, his face contorting as he tried to find a way to phrase what it was that he wanted to say. After several false starts and one angry exhale, he settled on "What did you do?"

_It's obvious, John. Don't play stupid. You're a doctor; do you need me to say it?_

"I broke some glass." The words were strained, and John blinked once, twice.

"With your fist."

"Yes."

"And how many times did you break this glass?" John mused, his tone indicating that he didn't expect Sherlock to give him an answer. Sherlock let out a sound that was almost a laugh, choked out by his mouth wired shut from the uncertainty of whether laughter would be appropriate or not. He steadied himself against flinching at the look John gave him.

_Not good._

John let go of his hand and Sherlock's mind started racing, constructing an excuse for the million scenarios his mind had constructed, one of which he was sure was about to play out. Instead, John did the opposite of what he expected, turning and heading towards the bathroom. "Come on then," he called out, "Let's get you patched up."

John was always doing the opposite of what he expected.

Instead of arguing, putting up a fight, making things even more difficult, the detective followed him to the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the bath. Neither of them mentioned the broken mirror above the sink, the spider web fractures leading away from a reflective mosaic that started at the height of Sherlock's eye level. Sherlock watched John get various medical kits out from the cabinet under the sink distractedly, passing glances at Sherlock every fifteen seconds, looking slightly unnerved by Sherlock's silence.

_Say something. What is it that people say in these situations? _

Sherlock stared at the tiles on the floor, wondering if he could get an apology around the tangle of pride that lurked in his throat, which changed even the simplest remark into something easily misinterpreted as an ego boost. John faced him, looking at the hand splayed across Sherlock's knee. "Sometimes I forget…" Sherlock said, voice faltering as he winced, John stretching his fingers out to their full length, examining the cuts and bloodied knuckles. "What?" the doctor asked absentmindedly.

Sherlock frowned, taking a moment to gather what it was he wanted to say, exactly, because wasted words were useless, pointless, annoying and time consuming.

"Sometimes I forget," he repeated, waving his free hand in an aggravated manner. The motion wasn't actually helping him think, but he needed movement. "How to be around people." His words were coming out horribly fractured, and he was wincing far too much, and he couldn't keep a sentence following the lines it was supposed to be strung on. A silence fell between them as Sherlock looked away, John casting wary glances up at him again, cleaning the cuts.

"It's as if I forget how to act in a manner that is socially acceptable. I don't mind it much… I suppose I don't notice it. But people, they look at me as though I am an intrusion." A shaky exhale that alarmed John, followed by Sherlock's head falling, his eyes boring holes into the bathroom floor, and John watched the dark hair fall into the angular face. "A virus."

A few quiet seconds passed as John grabbed some gauze and medical tape, and Sherlock could feel the doctor's eyes on him, on his neck, his cheek, the hair hanging in his face. But his mind was running, whirring, almost ignoring all of that, all of everything, one thought shining like a beacon. "A virus needs a cure." he trailed off, absentmindedly. "I wonder, is there a cure…"

John's hands stopped moving over his for one and one eighth of a second, which was enough time to bring Sherlock back into the present and out of his head, cutting his words short. His eyes slid to the doctor, studying his face, watching for some sign of emotion. John was trying hard to stay neutral, however, a little _too_ hard. He could tell Sherlock was watching him, and after a moment he flicked his eyes up to meet Sherlock's.

"Do you want a cure?

And with that one question, Sherlock allowed himself to think of a world that lurked in the farthest corners of his mind, a thought he rarely ever allowed himself to indulge in. A world where he didn't see the echoes of things no one noticed, a world where there were no white edges, a world where his mind wasn't exhausting itself by being exhausted, a world where he didn't think—no. He shook his head slightly, knocking loose the roots that had started to grow into the other structures of his mind, the tendrils whispering of peace and complacence, things that were rose-tinted trying to overturn the mechanical constructs of his thoughts. Dreams held no footing with logic.

John was still watching him, and Sherlock gave a half smile that felt entirely too melancholic for that exact contortion of muscles. "I suppose not."

The silence that followed was punctuated by the sound of their breathing and after two minutes and thirty-six seconds that seemed entirely too painful, John broke the silence.

"I would stay, you know."

"What's that?" Sherlock asked, head tilting as he studied the doctor's downcast eyes. Eyes were the window to the soul, isn't that how the saying went?

_Delete that. Eyes are simply organs that detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons. _

"If you were 'cured,'" John said, looking up at the detective, "I would stay."

"But you said-"

John sighed. "I know what I said. What I'm saying now is, I wouldn't leave." Sherlock stared at him, something caught between a smile and a grimace on his mouth. He flexed his fist and grimaced at the shot of pain that ran through his palm, and he saw John try to keep from smiling as he opened the cabinet to put everything back in its place.

"Thank you." It was quiet, but unmistakable, and it caused John to pause for a moment, looking back at Sherlock, who was sitting on the edge of the bath, hunched over and examining the variations of pain upon bending each individual finger.

"You're welcome." Sherlock didn't dare look up until John had left the bathroom, and when he heard the doctor bustling around the kitchen, he stood up, looking in the fractured mirror. There were at least a hundred reflections of himself, and he tilted his head, trying to figure out which one to concentrate on through the cracks. He wanted to pull a piece apart from the rest, but didn't want to risk another cut, John seeing him bleeding again.

_Which piece of glass am I? Delete that. Human beings are not made of glass._

_Am I human?_

_Delete that._


End file.
